


Salt

by Butterfly



Category: Farscape
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-09-04
Updated: 2004-09-04
Packaged: 2017-10-27 02:45:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Butterfly/pseuds/Butterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John isn't answering any more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salt

**Author's Note:**

> AU after S4's _Bad Timing_.

They're in the ocean.

Suddenly, it feels like something out of a nightmare or a vision, and John's been around this wheel more times than he cares to admit.

He never remembers until he gets back.

He'll forget again once he leaves.

* * *

"How's the game going?" DK asks, the same way that DK has asked from the beginning.

He never waits for an answer.

Not that John could answer, considering the circumstances.

But it isn't polite. They were friends once.

No, that was a different life.

John doesn't bother opening his eyes -- the decor is the same every spin of the wheel and DK is still talking. Though the questions change, John stopped trying to answer those a long time ago.

A brush of warm skin lingers against his face, DK's hand softer than it ever was in his memory.

But that makes sense.

* * *

The first time that he woke up there, he'd been terrified. So certain that he'd died when the anomaly had hit him. He's still not entirely certain that he didn't. This isn't his idea of heaven or hell, but the other place...

The Uncharted is both.

The first time that he opened his eyes here, after his first moment of disorientation, he'd noticed DK. He can still remember that first, foolish rush of relief that had filled him top to toe.

He'd called out to his friend, then realized that he couldn't move. No binds or chains seemed to hold him in place, but though he could breathe and talk and eventually scream, he couldn't move his body.

* * *

He'd closed his eyes again and when they'd opened, he saw only the blue-white rush of disaster, as he tumbled on his way to Moya and to Aeryn.

* * *

It was an experiment and a game. He'd found a wormhole, he had done that.

DK once tried to convince John that all the fucked-up dren that he saw in the UT was from his own mind.

It was after that failed that Aeryn had died.

John wonders sometimes if that had been a lesson. Sacrifice one to save one. Zhaan for Aeryn, tit for tat, each roll of the dice twisting the table out of order.

If it had been one, he hadn't learned it.

* * *

DK doesn't seem to be able to read John's mind. He always asks. He doesn't seem to care about the answers, though, just about John.

But he was surprised when John mentioned being doubled.

He'd been living two lives. Love and obsession, and from this far away, he couldn't have said which was which. He could remember kissing Aeryn, her lips heating under his, a fire to melt away her armor. He could remember missing Aeryn so much that his heart was a lump of leaden agony in his chest.

He can remember missing Earth just a little more.

Here, loving Aeryn seems like such a waste of energy. Caring about Aeryn, about Moya, about Chiana and D'Argo and Pilot and Rygel and... well, the list seemed to go on for far too long.

Earth, on the other hand...

* * *

When he died the first time, light and Aeryn blinding him, he'd wondered if that meant that it was over. But when he opened his eyes, DK was staring at him.

That time, when DK talked, John didn't pay attention.

When he went back to sleep, his awareness had dimmed by half.

Sometimes, John wonders if a soul can be killed in pieces.

* * *

When he dies the second time, ashes and Aeryn in his mouth, he doesn't dare hope that the game is over.

They aren't done playing with him yet.


End file.
